SimCity Cities of Tomorrow Mega Towers explained

The SimCity expansion Cities of Tomorrow may be pricey but what exactly do you get for your money? A new developer blog explains one of the new features, the Mega Towers.

Maxis are reluctant to let you build out by expanding city sizes but they are letting you build up with the new Mega Towers which come in two forms, Normal and Elite.

The Normal towers will contain the low and medium wealth Sims and don’t look nearly as snazzy as the Elite towers where all the rich folk are going to reside. The Normal towers are cheaper but they earn less money and are less “functional” than the pricier Elite towers which have better “coverage” on all their levels.

Once placed, these new towers come with multiple entrances which roads can hook into to enable a flow of traffic from the tower into the city. With the towers including Apartment, Mall, and Office space, it’s going to be essential to get the placement and flow right. Skybridges can also be placed to increase the flow between towers avoiding the mean streets below.

Mega towers could be considered mini cities in themselves as they supply power through nuclear reactors, education levels, waste reduction, and even parks to increase land value. There’s also what Maxis call a safety level where OmegaCo drones are stored then deployed in the case if emergencies such as fires, criminal activity, and injury. You will have to have joined forces with Omega’s evil empire though to take advantage of these.

The final piece of the Mega tower jigsaw are the “Crowns”, modules that can be placed on top of towers for extra bonuses such as wind/solar power generation or even a crown to attract tourists. If you want to attract shoppers to the tower’s mall then why not sling up an advertising crown.

Bright lights, small city

Maxis has taken the core game mechanics that are applied to a regular city and squeezed them into these towers. Building up is more favourable than building out it seems which I have to say is still going to be frustrating.